Far, Far Away....

All righty; so here's the first of what will *hopefully* be many exercises that I can post for you. This is from The Write-Brain Workbook by Bonnie Neubauer (which, by the way, is copyrighted and belongs to the author, not to me).

The exercise goes thusly:

Think of a person who really bugs or annoys you. Think of a place you'd like to send this person. Then--mentally--send them there! With that in mind, start with: The post card arrived....

I did this from one of my character's views. His name is Twink, he's eleven years old and quite full of himself. His worst enemy is Othmar, who he sees as a maniac who won't rest until he tracks Twink down. I wrote down this exercise in the actual book, so it's short and unedited (I'd rather be doing them on my laptop, but right now it's easier to jot them down on paper and type them up later). Anywho, here's what I came up with:


The post card arrived at about 8 AM. Othmar was just having his morning coffee and nasty pill. He hounded the delivery boy away without tipping and double locked his door. "See Paris in Style!" his card read. "You've won an all-expense paid trip to France!" He called the number provided and verified the trip. He arrived at the airport the next morning (with a week's supply of nasty pills, of course). He boarded his plane and took up a whole row with his bags, not letting anyone sit next to him. When the plane landed and he unloaded, he saw a lot of sand, and a sign which said, "Welcome to the Sahara--headstones complimentary." He saw his plane take off and he knew--Twink's revenge." And that's where my dream ended. ~ Twink


Now, um, I'm not very pleased with this exercise because I wanted to edit it SO BADLY while I was writing it. It doesn't really make sense, I start half the sentences with "he", Othmar falls for a trap (which isn't really characteristic), and IT ALL ENDS IN A DREAM (which is one of my pet peeves). But as I typed it out, I sort of realized, "This could be something an eleven year old wrote... I mean, it's bad enough!" And then I thought, Hey! Twink is eleven! All that said, I think, despite the atrocious writing style and the blood, sweat and tears it cost me to not edit it, I achieved a little goal. I wrote in character.

At least, I think I did.

I'd really love to see what you come up with, either here, on your own blog, or privately. And I'd like to know if you enjoyed this exercise and want more.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some edited writings soon! My sincerest apologies for this post to your eyes =P

God Bless!


Elisabeth